Weare police officers had been working with a confidential informant to buy heroin from his dealer in Manchester – later identified as Alex Cora deJesus. The informant had agreed to cooperate with the police in hopes of reducing charges or sentencing on pending DWI and drug charges.

“Rather than contacting the Manchester Police Department’s Special Investigation Unit to investigate an individual who was living in and selling drugs in Manchester, the Weare police continued to investigate on their own,” the report states.

On the afternoon of Aug. 14, the officers directed their informant to pick up deJesus from Manchester and bring him to Weare, under the guise of selling heroin to a second confidential informant.

DeJesus told the first informant he had recently used heroin and cocaine, and he sent a woman to make the sale in his place.

The deal took place at the Center Woods Elementary School in Weare, and then-Sgt. Joe Kelley was in charge of planning the bust. Beforehand, the police walked through his plan in the school’s parking lot.

The first informant and the woman met the second informant in the school’s parking lot, and the woman sold the drugs for $600. The police immediately arrested her, and she agreed to help with their investigation.

The woman then called deJesus from the Weare police station, telling him the first informant had used the heroin and was too high to drive her back to Manchester. DeJesus agreed to pick her up in Weare, and they planned to meet at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Lanctot’s Plaza along Route 114.

By that time, it was about 10 p.m.

“Since deJesus was anxious to pick up (the woman) and his money, the officers had only his travel time from Manchester to formulate a strategic plan for this transaction and the arrest,” the report states. “According to all the officers except (Officer Nicholas) Nadeau, no specific plan was discussed prior to their arrival at Dunkin’ Donuts.”

An unknown car pulled into the parking lot first, and one of the informants approached it. The police surrounded the car, thinking a drug deal had just taken place. But that driver was not deJesus, and the police asked him to leave the parking lot immediately.

Soon after, deJesus pulled into the parking lot in a green Acura with another woman in the front seat. When the informant had approached the car and then walked away, the three unmarked cruisers surrounded deJesus’s car.

Sgt. Ken Cox and Detective Frank Hebert got out to approach DeJesus, drawing their weapons and telling him to stop. Instead, he drove between two cruisers and over the grass onto Route 114, heading south.

Both Cox and Nadeau fired at deJesus’s car as he attempted to escape. Cox fired two rounds into the passenger side of the car, aiming for the driver’s back. He told investigators he thought DeJesus was going to hit another officer with his car. He did not hit either deJesus or the woman in the passenger seat.

Nadeau jumped out of the way of the car, and the passenger rearview mirror may have grazed his stomach.

“At some point he fired his shotgun,” the report states.

It was Nadeau’s bullet that killed deJesus, striking him in the right temple.

Nadeau offered three defenses for firing – he thought deJesus’s car was going to hit Kelley, he thought Cox might have been hit by the car and could be dragging underneath it, and he thought deJesus was a danger to other drivers on Route 114.

(Megan Doyle can be reached at 369-3321 or mdoyle@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @megan_e_doyle.)

A report by the state attorney general’s office released yesterday concluded the officer-involved shooting eight months ago in Weare could have been prevented, but there is not enough evidence to prove whether the officer who killed a fleeing drug dealer was justified. The 44-page report is the first public examination of the Aug. 14 shooting, during which Alex Cora deJesus, …